A New Look at the Rediscovery of Botticelli in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Vernon Lee

The rediscovery of artists from the early modern period in nineteenthcentury Europe was a formative phenomenon in the development of the
discipline of art history and had a significant influence on the visibility
of contemporary cultural processes. One of the outstanding examples
of this phenomenon is the rediscovery of the Italian painter Sandro
Botticelli (1445–1510) in Britain in the second half of the century. This
article examines the response to this phenomenon and especially that
of the British author and art critic Vernon Lee (Violet Paget, 1856–
1935). Her essay on Botticelli, which was published in 1882 in the
Cornhill Magazine, followed the transfer of Botticelli’s frescoes to the
Louvre Museum. I argue that Lee’s response reveals her recognition
of Botticelli, whose art was undergoing a process of rediscovery, as
symbolic capital, bearing the weight of nineteenth-century Britain’s
new cultural baggage. In order to achieve this, Botticelli’s art had been
disconnected from its natural source in fifteenth-century Italy, where
it was created. While on the one hand, Lee identifies and criticizes the
phenomenon of rediscovery, on the other, she exploits the discourse
around Botticelli, whose reputation had received a boost as a result of
this same process.